


Loyalty

by haledamage



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 23:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12023013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haledamage/pseuds/haledamage
Summary: Edér's always considered himself a loyal man.





	Loyalty

**Author's Note:**

> for Pillars prompt 0004
> 
> fun fact: while I was rolling for the second part of the table, my die rolled off the table and disappeared, so I decided to include several of them since I clearly wasn't meant to pick one. so prompt is Edér / misc / loyalty

Loyalty is a funny thing.

Edér's always considered himself a loyal man. He followed his brother to war. Followed Eothas his whole life, even after he got blown up. He stayed in Gilded Vale far past the point he should've left. All of it out of a sense of loyalty.

The farther Edér gets from the Vale, though, the more he sees how wrong he was about that. That wasn't loyalty, it was obligation. There's a fine line between the two, granted, but one that's clearer with every passing day.

When it comes down to it, the difference is simple. Obligations are chosen for you and loyalty is something you choose for yourself.

Obligation is what has Sagani halfway around the world from the people she loves. It's Pallegina and her ducs. It's Aloth and the Leaden Key. It's Edér and Eothas.

Loyalty is the Watcher.

Kiki has a way of drawing kith to her, but more than that, of drawing them to each other. Edér had seen Aloth around in the Vale but never had an inclination to talk to him; along comes Kai and now he would travel to the ends of Eora for him without a second's hesitation. He was aimless, listless, just waiting for his turn on the tree, but now he'd stand toe to toe with a dragon, nothing but a larder door between himself and certain doom, to protect his new family.

And that's what they are. Kai took a nobody and a has-been from the Vale, a couple random people she found on the side of the road, a man in a _barrel of fish_ , and half a dozen misfits and outcasts and turned them into family. And Edér gets it now, he gets the difference between choosing who to follow and having it chosen for you.

Loyalty is Kana's defiant chanting as he stands over Aloth's fallen form, bleeding and surrounded by wichts but refusing to leave his friend's side. It's Aloth and Iselmyr and choosing the truth over fifty years of secrets and lies. It's Hiravias jumping into the waters under Ionni Brathr, autumn staelgar fur wet and frosted and Kai in his arms, shivering and half-drowned but alive. It's Pallegina, banished for doing the right thing instead instead of following orders. It's Sagani returning home and retiring, choosing family over the hunt.

It's loyalty that kicks Edér in the ass and gets him finally invested in his own life again. If Kiki and Aloth and even Hiravias, in his way, can care so much about a washed-up soldier like him, maybe it's time he started caring too. Maybe it's time he stop acting like he died with Woden and start living again.

Loyalty is love. It's letters on his desk from Caed Nua, inviting him to visit every holiday. It's letters from Rauatai and Raedceras and the Deadfire Archipelago that say nothing in particular but let him know _I'm still alive._ It's Kai and Aloth saying, in their way, that they are still in his corner. That they haven't forgotten him. That they're still family.

Loyalty is Edér dropping everything as fast as a keep crumbles and hopping on a ship to hunt down his dead god. But more than that, loyalty is knowing that were their roles reversed, Kiki'd do the same for him. And when it comes down to it, he thinks that's the real difference.

Loyalty is knowing the ones you choose have chosen you back.


End file.
